How are you doing motion and occupancy?
I was a long time user of DooMotion (rest in peace Jim), but once I migrated to HS3 years ago, I had to come up with an occupancy/motion activated light strategy since the old plugin no longer worked.
Anyways, I have been doing it this way for years. And it works but I was wondering if there are better ways.
Here is my scenario:
I have an old Napco Gemini Alarm system with the plugin by nfrobertson (works great).
My alarm system has several wired and wireless PIRs which I can use as triggers.
When I walk into a room, I want the lights to come on.
When no motion is detected for say 30 minutes, I want the lights to turn off.
When I walk back into the room before the 30 min time has expired, I want to reset the occupancy and start over.
When my wife presses the light switch, I want to occupancy to reset and manually turn off (WAF factor - not all in on automated occupancy)
Here is what I have been doing to many years:
I have a virtual device for occupancy, lets say living room.
I create 3 events
-if PIR opens
--then remove delayed event
--then set living room virtual device on
--then set living room virtual device off delay 30 minutes
-if living room virtual device on
--then turn light on
-if living room virtual device off
--then turn light off
I can then add other conditions, like dusk2dawn, ect. I can also create a WAF event that says if switch triggers an off (I use insteon), then turn living room virtual device off (which then triggers the on/off event routines.
So basically I have 3 events for my complicated motion occupancy system. Multiply that by 10 PIRs and I have lots of events.
I am looking to simplify.
It would also work by using timers (I just started playing with timers), but with a timer I would need an additional event and timer per PIR.
for example 4 events
-if PIR opens
--then restart timer
I was a long time user of DooMotion (rest in peace Jim), but once I migrated to HS3 years ago, I had to come up with an occupancy/motion activated light strategy since the old plugin no longer worked.
Anyways, I have been doing it this way for years. And it works but I was wondering if there are better ways.
Here is my scenario:
I have an old Napco Gemini Alarm system with the plugin by nfrobertson (works great).
My alarm system has several wired and wireless PIRs which I can use as triggers.
When I walk into a room, I want the lights to come on.
When no motion is detected for say 30 minutes, I want the lights to turn off.
When I walk back into the room before the 30 min time has expired, I want to reset the occupancy and start over.
When my wife presses the light switch, I want to occupancy to reset and manually turn off (WAF factor - not all in on automated occupancy)
Here is what I have been doing to many years:
I have a virtual device for occupancy, lets say living room.
I create 3 events
-if PIR opens
--then remove delayed event
--then set living room virtual device on
--then set living room virtual device off delay 30 minutes
-if living room virtual device on
--then turn light on
-if living room virtual device off
--then turn light off
I can then add other conditions, like dusk2dawn, ect. I can also create a WAF event that says if switch triggers an off (I use insteon), then turn living room virtual device off (which then triggers the on/off event routines.
So basically I have 3 events for my complicated motion occupancy system. Multiply that by 10 PIRs and I have lots of events.
I am looking to simplify.
It would also work by using timers (I just started playing with timers), but with a timer I would need an additional event and timer per PIR.
for example 4 events
-if PIR opens
--then restart timer
--then set living room virtual device on
--if timer becomes 30 min
--then set living room virtual device off
Plus the 2 light on/off events
That's 4 events vs 3.
How are others doing it?
Like I said it works and I do subscribe to philosophy "if it aint broke, don't fix it" but would be nice to simplify the complexity (in case I ever needed to rebuild). I got on this how long would it take to rebuild rant after the insteon debacle where they upgraded the HUB and broke the plugin access.
--if timer becomes 30 min
--then set living room virtual device off
Plus the 2 light on/off events
That's 4 events vs 3.
How are others doing it?
Like I said it works and I do subscribe to philosophy "if it aint broke, don't fix it" but would be nice to simplify the complexity (in case I ever needed to rebuild). I got on this how long would it take to rebuild rant after the insteon debacle where they upgraded the HUB and broke the plugin access.
Comment